


A Hundred Years to the Day

by kuro49



Category: The Old Guard (2020 Movie), The Old Guard (2020)
Genre: Andy Lives, F/F, Gen, M/M, Post-Canon, Team Feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-12
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:28:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25214680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuro49/pseuds/kuro49
Summary: There are many things on this living earth that are far worse than death. There are many more worth living for.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Nile Freeman, Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh, Booker | Sebastian Le Livre & Quynh, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 35
Kudos: 608





	A Hundred Years to the Day

**Author's Note:**

> i wanted team-poly fic, and this could be read as that if you squint. i just love everyone in this movie so soo sooo much, i think my fucking heart could burst. (also i have no idea what you mean andy isn't around 100 years later)

Forgiveness comes and goes, ebbs and flows.

A hundred years to the day, in an English pub by the water, on an empty stretch of beach, Booker waits. It’s a mess of nerves, it’s anxiety bubbling inside of his gut like the detonation of a grenade against flesh. He thinks of them, he dreams of them, and he wonders if he occupies a fraction of the space that they do inside of him. This anticipation is an unfamiliar thing, one to gnaw a hole that yearns wider and deeper inside of him.

There is a need to see them once again, this wish to have them at his side in turn. 

“You look scared.” Quynh offers from next to him.

Booker fixes her with a thin flat look. “You don’t have to look so delighted about that.”

She laughs at him, loud in the wane of her eyes. “You haven’t seen me _delighted_ yet, Book.”

He can believe that. Just as he believes every last word in the stories she’s told him of Andromache and herself. Quynh remembers, just as he remembers the choice he made once. He also remembers Andy saying to have a little faith.

In the span of time left in exile, Booker dreams of them many, many times. 

Nile says it best, wait until tomorrow. 

Faith and karma and what is probably destiny all salvaged into one, they are meant to be together even if it is painful, hurtful, near-excruciating at every turn and twist. The way they always return to one another is the one constant in the unknown. The only way that feels natural like that first breath taken into the lungs, again (again and a million times again).

For what it’s worth, love doesn’t begin to describe the depth of what they hold inside of them. 

Its magnitude is something to behold.

“Baby.” 

Nile turns to her.

“Don’t think just ‘cause I haven’t said anything that I don’t know what you’ve been doing.” Andy says, not moving when Nile just shifts closer.

“You never said anything about the other way around.” Nile tips her head into the crook of Andy’s neck, rests a cheek over the arch where Andy’s neck stretches out and extends into her shoulder. “You just forbid him from contacting us.”

“This is not an _us_ situation.” Andy tells her, and there’s that soft voiceless little huff that escapes from between her teeth. 

They’ve been here before, over and over and all over again. Nile would have forgiven him with an apology alone. But she doesn’t know Booker like Andy does, like Joe and Nicky does. The thousand of years before her birth, her death, her rebirth. It makes for a deep cut. A hundred years is a long time. But what is a hundred in the millenia that has already passed?

“Whatever makes you sleep at night.” Nile answers, a smile curving over her mouth as she rolls over in the bed, tugging Andy with her by the arm so she is draped against the full length of her spine. 

“I sleep just fine.” Andy mutters against the nape of Nile’s neck, feels the wane of Nile’s smile against her skin. 

Nile doesn’t give her the last word, and even softer than a murmur, she goes. “You’ll sleep better after tomorrow, I can promise you that.”

Nile Freeman is a believer. Her first death is a slash across her throat with no scars to show for it. Reconciliation doesn’t come until a very long time after that when her blood to spill each time is thick, flowing warm and red. Andy’s first death is—

A century to the day, they get closer every day. 

We dream of each other. 

They stop when we meet. 

Nicky calls it destiny. Joe isn’t about to say otherwise when he met his destiny in a man he was taught to hate.

The dreams start up, and they too have been here before. When Andy had Quynh, and they had Lykon. When Nicky went by Nicolo di Genova and Joe went by Yusuf Al-Kaysani and they lived and died by each other’s hands time and time again.

“Want to make a bet?” Nicky faces Joe with a grin.

“What? That Book will bring Andy her favourite as a peace offering?” Joe tilts his head from the other end of the love seat and lets out a quiet scoff when Nicky nods. “That’s a sure thing,” and then he adds like he always does, “like you and I.”

Nicky nudges at him where their legs are tangled together, ankles hooked around each other. His grin is no less wide, smitten is always the only look he knows on him. “He doesn’t know where I get the best Baklava from.”

“It’s been a hundred years.”

“Yet we have known him for thousands more.” Nicky says this with weight, and what goes unsaid beneath that weight is this: Yet he still betrayed us. Wry dark humour, Joe’s mouth tilts in that same sweet curve that Nicky knows as his constant, then and now. Perhaps now, more than ever.

“Have you consider that maybe even immortals like us can change?”

Here’s a thought all on its own. 

Nicky smiles back at him. It comes in waves, the anger at having Booker to be the one to lead them in for slaughter. To have one of them that knows the horror of the many, _many_ things on this living earth that are far worse than death itself, and still go through with the same betrayal that Booker chose for himself.

They are all they have. A century or ten, this forgiveness is theirs to give.

She wears her hair down, long and black and loose, in the salty breeze that washes over them. 

What Booker doesn’t bring is fresh Baklava that tastes of hazelnut and rose water and pomegranates. What Booker brings with him is Quynh.

She speaks first: “It’s been too long, Andromache.”

She has been worshiped as a God. She has also been trialed as a witch. She has loved and lost and lived and died. And there is always that same question with the same answer, Andy has forgotten how perfect her smile is. The dreams stop here. 

A hundred years to the day, in an old English pub on the banks of the Thames, they meet again.


End file.
